The Importance of Planning in an Organisation

Planning is very important to an organisation as it helps to pave the path for its goals. A good strategic plan will help a business to create a strategy that will enable them to start to pave the path towards achieving their goals, and if it all goes well such strategic plan will enable the business to achieve their goals. Additionally, such strategic planning tool is useful when making day-to-day business decisions and also for evaluating progress and changing approaches when moving forwards. Planning in an organisation is necessary for the effective and efficient functioning of every organization irrespective of its size, type and objectives.

The process begins with reviewing your current operations, position in the market, estimated profits and identifying what needs to be improved operationally in the upcoming year. Planning involves a lot of results-driven thinking and determining the steps that are necessary to arrive at those results. Additionally, such planning works well with financial results, your forecasts, budgets and other performance management.

Here are a few main reasons why planning is important for a business and what specific benefits it can bring in the organisation:

Efficient Use of Resources

Planning in your organisation can help you get more efficient use of your resources. While the different sized organisation has different resources and requirements, but they all come in limited supply, and sometimes can be difficult to get your hands on. But, effective planning can bring information to the top management about business decisions that can make your resource management more effective and in turn help your organisation to reach its objectives.

Establishing Organizational Goals

Strategic planning can help your business not only set strategic goals but help express them in a SMART way. Measurable goals are key for a successful business planning process and will help set specific, concrete objectives. Measurable goals are important to an organisation as they can enable evaluation of the progress and pace of business developments at a correct rate. These goals also need to be realistic and aggressive in order not to get too comfortable with your current market position.

Managing Risk And Uncertainty

Planning can help your business manage risk and uncertainty better. No one can really control the economic or political environment around them. Unforeseen events can mean a serious step back for your business, or in more serious cases it can have even more negative financial consequences. Therefore, being prepared is the next best thing.

Planning enables businesses to run comprehensive what-if analyses, which helps with envisioning potential risk factors that will affect the business. Based on the possible situations that come out of the results, the company can make an informed decision about what action the business will require in said situation. The primary goal of what-if analysis is to include many solutions in the decision and not limit your business resources too much.

Evaluating Progress

Strategic planning is a very useful tool when it comes to evaluating progress. Organisation benefit from building a planning process that involves evaluating goals and progress in light of company’s success to achieve these goals. Regular business performance reviews are crucial if you are looking to find new markets, access new customers and other new business opportunities.

While creating effective business planning is quite a sizable task, it provides immense insight into your business, its performance and it can become a good revenue driver.

Are you looking at how to improve your financial forecasting and business planning?